


The First Night After, John Can't Sleep

by VanScritto



Series: The First Night After [1]
Category: The Tomorrow People (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 00:51:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanScritto/pseuds/VanScritto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 (+1) times that John can't sleep after something happened with Astrid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Night After, John Can't Sleep

The first night after he meets Astrid, John can't sleep.  
  
He tells himself it's because of the mind-blowingly stupid plan to kill Stephen, on the off chance that he can stop time in the moment of his death, reach limbo, talk to his very dead father, and then come back unharmed. It's because that mind-blowingly stupid plan actually worked.  
Cara is walking around in circles to calm her nerves. John doesn't usually pry into other people's thoughts, especially not Cara's, but her mind is all over the place and her walls slip. She's relieved, happy. He'd go so far as to call it giddy. They're all celebrating with champagne Russell stole from a top-notch winery. John had played along for a while and then slowly retreated. They hadn't yet noticed his absence.  
  
Meanwhile, he's sitting in his favorite alone-time spot listening to the steady drop of the pipes and the sound of the trains passing by in the tunnels. He thinks about Stephen, curses the guy for his idiotic idea, curses Cara for supporting him in his idiotic idea, curses himself for shooting Roger in the first place. He's relieved, too, of course. He doesn't need more blood on his hands. He doesn't need another pair of eyes looking at him the way that Cara did when she found out. Especially not Astrid's.  
  
Not Astrid, who radiates kindness and happiness in a way he's never seen before. It scares him to think about how he would have had to go and look at her to tell her that he had accidentally-on-purpose killed her best friend. It scares him to imagine all that kindness and happiness wiped away in just one moment, by him, never to return again. Luckily, it's not a scenario he has to go through now.  
He hears Cara's footsteps and the thought escapes his mind.  
  
***  
  
The first night after Astrid gets hurt, John can't sleep.  
  
He knows that it was only a matter of time before Ultra would use Astrid against Stephen. In his mind, he knows it's not Stephen's fault, really. But his gut feels differently.  
He sits by her side as she sleeps soundly on a couch in their lair. Stephen is slouched on an armchair close by, passed out with exhaustion. One of his hands is resting on Astrid's leg as if to make sure she's still there at all times. There is a nasty bruise on her cheek from being backhanded by one of Ultra's agents and a few scratches on her arms and face. She had taken some pain killers after she'd been rescued and brought down here. Her sleep is dreamless.  
As John watches the blanket covering her form rising and falling in time with her breath, he wonders what she would otherwise dream about.  
  
"Do you think they will believe the 'I walked into a door' story?"  
She looks at him from half-lidded eyes, her voice groggy. She winces at the sound of her own voice and slowly reaches to touch her head as if that could make the pain go away. He reaches out and presses a wet washcloth against her forehead.  
"You'd be surprised at what people are willing to believe," he says quietly.  
"This is nice," she says, apparently drifting off into unconsciousness again. He tries to pull his hand away, but she grabs at it helplessly. "Don't," she says, slurring the word. Because of the pills, she doesn't have nearly enough strength to hold his hand in place, but he keeps it there anyway until she's fallen asleep again.  
  
Stephen wakes up a few hours later and wordlessly questions John's presence. Just like everyone seems to question John's presence lately. As if everywhere he is, he's not needed.  
Just as wordlessly, he leaves.  
  
***  
  
The first night after Astrid sees him kill someone, John can't sleep.  
  
He tries to, he really does. He's exhausted. For the past few days, he's only managed to catch a couple of hours here and there. Stephen's theory about limbo is becoming less and less of a theory and more and more of a steady plan. Ultra has caught on, of course, which means that John has his hands full of trying to keep everyone safe while Stephen is away with Cara and Russell trying to create a machine that can get everyone to limbo. Not just those with the power to stop time.  
  
So, yes, John really does want to sleep. But every time he closes his eyes, he sees her face. The look she'd given him when she'd realized the man that had been chasing her was dead now. The way her mouth had opened and closed several times as if she had wanted to say something but the words wouldn't come out.  
In his mind, he imagines what she might be thinking. By now, he's run through lots of different scenarios, none of them end in her having a very high opinion of him. He gives up on the idea of sleep and checks in with every single one of the others telepathically to make sure they're alright.  
There's a knock on the door. Astrid doesn't wait for him to call her in.  
  
"I can't sleep," she says matter-of-factly as she walks over to his bed. He's still baffled by how easily she's gotten used to the run-down look and feel of their underground lair. He's never been to her house, but he's sure that up until she met them, she'd never had to deal with blankets smelling of mold and stolen pillows. Stolen beds. Stolen everything, really. She sits down on the edge of his mattress, keeping her back towards him.  
"I still feel his hands on my arms," she whispers, hugging herself.  
He reaches out and runs his hands down her arms, trying to chase the phantom touch away.  
"He's not here anymore, I promise," he says.  
"I know. Thanks to you." She shoots him a smile he hadn't expected. "I thought your kind couldn't kill."  
"I'm different," he says.  
"Special?"  
"No," he laughs sadly, "there's nothing special about being able to kill. There's nothing special about killing."  
"Hm," she says as if she were considering something. He's tempted to take a peek into her mind, to find out what she's thinking, but he doesn't. He wouldn't want her to read his mind either, even if she had telepathic powers. "Can I stay here?" She asks then, not looking at him. "There's a pipe in the wall near my bed that's leaking. The dripping sound is driving me nuts."  
He barely manages to say, "Sure," before her head hits his pillow. It's a tight fit with the two of them in the twin bed. He'd gotten his own room after Cara and him had decided to call it quits and he just hadn't considered stealing a bigger bed than this. Half of his mind is cursing himself for it now that he curls himself into the empty space. She grabs his hand at some point during his struggles and pulls it around her, effectively locking him in place. He listens to her breaths evening out.  
"I'm sorry," he whispers when he thinks she's asleep. She isn't.  
"Sorry you saved my life?" She asks half-asleep.  
"Sorry you had to see that," he counters.  
"I'm sorry you had to do that."  
And just like that, the knot in his stomach lessens a bit.  
  
***  
  
The first night after he reads Astrid's mind, John can't sleep.  
  
He would like to say it was an accident, but it wasn't. There had been this dance that he thought they were doing. Glances that lingered a bit too long, smiles that he thought were reserved for him, touches he let himself get carried away with when nobody was looking. But now he realizes it was all just in his head.  
  
Just this morning, they had managed to bring Roger back from limbo and wanted to celebrate properly — and by properly they meant pizza, soda and lots of fries. And so they were standing there in the kitchen, munching on cheesy crust and having one of those moments. He just wanted to know what she was thinking whenever she got that look on her face as if he caught her with a hand in a cookie jar. Maybe she was thinking about him as much as he was thinking about her.  
As it turned out, she wasn't. Her mind was filled with university applications. Applications for universities and colleges out of state. Normal high school graduate stuff.  
  
In a way, he is relieved, though. If there is any person that he wants to have a normal life more than anything, it's Astrid. And he has to admit to himself that the more distance she puts between them and herself, the better.  
  
***  
  
The first night after they move into the safe house, John can't sleep.  
  
College out of state is off the plate. Well, college is off the plate. Out of state is very much on the plate, John thinks as he's getting settled on the couch. Roger hasn't been back for two weeks and already Ultra is going nuts. More frantic than ever, the Founder is targeting not just the Tomorrow People, but their families and friends as well. Astrid being Stephen's best friend is pretty much the number one target.  
And John, as Ultra's former star agent, is her best chance at survival, Stephen had decided.  
  
So now the two of them are here in Ohio. The state of never-ending humidity, as Astrid puts it so eloquently. Also, the state of nothing-ever-happens-here, John would counter. The house is a small one-bedroom home in a suburb of Cincinnati that John had purchased several years back when he first fled from Ultra. He had purchased several small properties all over the country back then, all with money he'd stolen.  
  
He hears Astrid's footsteps on the carpet.  
"Did you like it here?" She asks as she hands him another pillow. He insists that she takes the bed and he sleeps on the couch. Ever since he read her mind that one time, he's been trying to put some distance between them. Getting attached to her will put her danger, just as their current situation proves.  
"It was nice for the ten days that I stayed here," he says.  
"It looks well put-together for a ten day stay."  
"It was furnished when I bought it."  
"That would explain the carpet," she says and laughs shortly.  
"What's wrong with the carpet?" He asks, because he doesn't see anything wrong with it.  
"It looks like mud," she says. "I bet the owner before you thought that color would hide the stains better."  
"It probably does," he says and laughs when she winces. She mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like 'not funny, idiot' and goes to bed.  
  
"John?" She's back in the living room and would probably have scared the crap out of him had he not been awake listening to every little creek in the house.  
"Mhm?"  
"I know you've lived in the sewers for the last couple of years, but now that we're hiding in plain sight we should probably think of a cover story." She turns on the lamp on the couch table. The difference in the light is barely noticeable. They need to get a better bulb.  
"A cover story?" He sits up when she forces him to squeeze on the couch. He notices she has a notepad on her knees.  
"You know, who we are and what we're doing."  
"I've never needed a cover story."  
"Well, you've never stayed in one place long enough to need one. And I'm sure the rats in the train tunnels didn't much care. But the lady from the other side of the streets two houses down," she says and lifts the curtains to point out the house she means, "will definitely care. She's watered her roses four times since we arrived."  
He'd noticed that as well. He's a little surprised that she has, though. He sees her eyes dart up and down the street and then pull the curtain back. She's adding a scribble to the ten scribbles she's already put the notepad.  
"Okay then. What's our cover story?" He puts his hand over hers on instinct and is surprised to find that it's cold. Her hands are never cold.  
"I was thinking newlyweds." He stares at her not knowing what to say when she presses on: "We need new IDs anyway, so we can make me a bit older than eighteen. My mother still looks like she's twenty-five so I can probably pass for twenty-something-ish, right?" She begins to ramble then, about all the little things she's seen people do in movies. "We should also change our names. Do you want to pick our last name?"  
"Do I have to pick it out now? It's three in the morning."  
"And by eleven we'll have a lady with a casserole on our doorstep. We've got to have it figured out by then," she huffs and her voice rises on the last couple of words.  
He used to just wing these situations. Make a story up on the spot. But he has to admit, now that there's two of them, that's not really the way they can go about it. So he gets up to make some tea and think of the most generic name in America.  
"How do you like Williams?" He says and she writes it down.  
  
***  
  
The first night after Astrid says she loves him, John can't sleep.  
  
It's not the first time she's said it, but it's the first time she meant it. It's been three weeks since they moved into this new house, six months since they left New York and the third name since they left their old ones behind. She's a pro at this now, figuring out backstories that are easy to remember and as generic as possible. She makes him pick out their names and birth dates since he's the one with the fake ID connections. But the rest is her domain. He thinks it's because it makes her feel in control in all the mess they're in.  
  
She has made them newlyweds in every town they moved to. He stole her new rings every time they moved and returned the old ones to their original owner. She would make him put them on her finger at a rest stop a couple hundred miles away from their old home. Then he would kiss his new wife on her forehead — Amelia Sophia Greenwood, in this case — and tell her that everything will be perfect in their new town — Coeur d'Alene in Idaho, in this case.  
  
They're good at this by now, it's almost automatic: the little touches here and there, John picking the mushrooms out of every dish for her or Astrid fondly talking about his snoring. So it's not a new thing that she would say she loves him, in that playful way right before she gives him a peck on the mouth and goes to buy some kind of frilly, colorful decoration he doesn't necessarily need in his house. And he'd tell her he loved her, too, in that fake-annoyed tone and with a big grin on his face, and everyone in the close vicinity would swear they're the kind of couple that stays together forever.  
But this had been different. They had been doing the dishes together, like every night, when he'd heard her sniffle. She'd laughed when she'd seen him notice.  
"It's nothing," she'd said. And then, "we used to have the same dishes when I was younger."  
He'd pulled her into a hug, like he always would in such a moment, and just let her cry into his shirt.  
"I'm really glad you're here with me," she'd whispered into his neck.  
"I'm glad you're here, too. Things would be so boring without you," he'd said to lighten the mood and she'd laughed. She'd pulled back and he'd pushed her hair out of her face.  
"We'll be okay," he'd said at the same time she'd said, "I love you."  
Silence. He'd wondered if he'd heard right.  
"I really do love you," she'd said and suddenly she was kissing him. Or he was kissing her.  
  
Now, John is lying in bed with Astrid's head on his chest. He's wide awake, even though it's well past midnight and he has to get up at 6AM to go to work. She's drawing circles on his stomach, though, so he doesn't really mind.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by their first meeting in the last episode. Everything after is obviously fictional.  
> Astrid's point of view can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1125116).


End file.
